Travel

It was our typical Saturday morning not knowing what to do for the day. So we jumped in the car, as usual, with no destination. Is it possible that we are almost in the prime of our lives and we haven’t hiked up to the Hollywood sign? knowing it’s only a 40 minute drive from home? So why not?! Heck yeah!

I immediately yelped what would be the best route while Chris drove, and lets face it, I wanted one of the easiest hikes to do being that we were beginners and I didn’t want it to have the opposite effect on us, discouragement. Noah, our 13 year old was excited to go too! I was so happy that everyone was happy and interested in doing this since I had been longing for awhile and I know Chris had been too.

(Note: I say beginners because since that hike we’ve done another 4 hikes and try to get 2-4 in each month.Yelp was very handy in this search and now we’ve found All trails too that allows us to judge the hike by the terrain and difficulty. We definitely recommend.)

Back to our story. So unfortunately we probably wouldn’t be able to find our trail head again even if we tried. We did, however, find the perfect spot that turned out to be about a 5 mile round trip hike with little parking difficulties. I must say at the beginning of the hike we were a little confused on the direction, as were many random hikers that decided to start from different points of entrance (probably because like us they got lost trying to find the main one… Oh well), but that’s where the fun begins, right? It seemed like we were going in the right direction, although we did climb a rather treacherous hill at the beginning that could’ve been avoided if we just would’ve gone a little farther. Fellow hikers also provided us with direction or at least confidence that we were going in the right direction. Water, Ice and Drinks are offered at the base of one of the main trail heads made us laugh! (Wish I had a photo of that).

The climb was pretty vertical but taken at a steady pace was well worth the final destination. THE HOLLYWOOD SIGN! As we sat on the small dirt hill overlooking LA, enjoying some apple slivers and drinking some of our well deserved water in the 85 F weather typical of Southern California, we admired our city and relished in our achievement for the day. It was probably an hour and half journey but fun and well worth it. Thanks to this hike we have begun to explore new ones.

A couple notes for the interested hikers.

1. Our route was probably the fastest route to the sign although there are many others that boast a 15 mile hike so if you’re more adventurous like we will be moving forward, you might want to try a more difficult route.

2. There are three different ways to the Hollywood sign so make sure you get directions on how to get to the trail head. We missed it by a mile but it was an easy flat terrain to do.

3. Bring water and a snack so you can stay awhile to admire the city

4. There are tons of people. Some tourists, some first timers and a load of everyday people who go there for the nice work out while having that panoramic view.